Drawing and Shape Tools in LibreOffice Writer

LibreOffice Writer includes a built-in suite of vector drawing and shape tools that allow users to create illustrations, flowcharts, callouts, and diagrams directly inside text documents. Accessible primarily through the Drawing toolbar, these integrated vector graphics eliminate the need for external image editing software for basic to intermediate design tasks, ensuring that visual elements remain crisp at any display resolution or print size.

Accessing the Drawing Toolbar

To view and use the drawing tools, enable the toolbar by navigating to View > Toolbars > Drawing in the top menu bar. Once enabled, the toolbar typically appears docked at the bottom or left side of the workspace.

Key Shape and Drawing Tool Categories

1. Lines and Arrows

• Straight Lines & Arrows: Draw single lines, double-ended arrows, or lines with custom end-caps.
• Curves and Polygons: Create smoothed Bézier curves, freeform hand-drawn lines, and closed or open polygon shapes.
• Connector Lines: Direct connector lines (straight, curved, or angled) that automatically snap to predefined points on other shapes, useful for dynamic diagrams.
• Dimension Lines: Technical drawing lines that calculate and display the real-time distance between two points within the document layout.

2. Basic Geometric Shapes

• Rectangles and Squares: Standard rectangles, rounded rectangles, and parallelogram variants.
• Ellipses and Circles: Full circles, ovals, pie segments, and arc segments.
• Isosceles and Right Triangles: Standard geometric triangles with adjustable vertices.
• Polygons: Preconfigured regular polygons ranging from pentagons to octagons.

3. Symbol Shapes

• Includes non-standard geometric and illustrative symbols such as smiley faces, hearts, suns, moons, clouds, forbidden signs, and puzzle pieces.

4. Block Arrows

• A wide variety of directional block arrows including straight, bent, split, four-way, and circular arrows, each featuring control points to adjust arrow head and stem thickness.

5. Flowchart Elements

• Standard flowchart symbols including Process (rectangle), Decision (diamond), Input/Output (parallelogram), Document, and Terminator shapes, designed to work directly with connector lines.

6. Callouts and Speech Bubbles

• Rectangular, rounded, and cloud-style speech and thought bubbles with customizable pointer tails for annotating document text or screenshots.

7. Stars and Banners

• Multi-point stars (from 4-point to 24-point), explosion bursts, horizontal and vertical scrolls, and ribbon banners suitable for highlighting text or key takeaways.

8. 3D Objects and Fontwork

• 3D Shapes: Simple three-dimensional solids including cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, and pyramids with adjustable lighting and perspective.
• Fontwork Gallery: Artistic text-styling tool (similar to WordArt) that bends, curves, and styles text paths with custom 3D and gradient fills.

Object Customization and Formatting

Once drawn, any shape in LibreOffice Writer can be customized using the Properties panel or the Line and Fill toolbar:

• Fills: Solid colors, gradients, hatching patterns, bitmaps, or transparency.
• Lines: Custom stroke styles (solid, dashed, dotted), thicknesses, and color options.
• Text Embedding: Double-clicking any closed shape allows you to type text directly inside it without creating a separate text box.
• Arrangement and Grouping: Layer multiple shapes using bring-to-front or send-to-back controls, or group them into a single movable graphic.
• Anchoring and Text Wrap: Anchor shapes to a page, paragraph, or character, and set wrapping options to control how the surrounding document text flows around the graphic.